November is the Prep’s annual Hunger Awareness Month, sponsored by the senior Ministry Leadership Team. It is an opportunity for all in the Prep community to learn more about the issue of hunger in our world and in our own community, and how our Catholic faith challenges us to respond to these needs. Our faith reminds us that the right to life for all persons, based on their identity as precious children of God, means that all people have basic rights to those things that are necessary for them to live and thrive, including the right to food.
Each year the Prep collects non-perishable food items during the Month of November to assist the work of three local Agencies:
1- Part of the Solution (POTS), a local soup kitchen and community service organization on Webster Ave.
2- Concourse House, a Home for Women and their Children that works to eliminate homelessness by providing families with safe, stable, transitional housing.
3- Mercy Center, a community center for women and their families located in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx, offering programs and services that empower women to reach their full potential and become agents of change in their families and communities.
Each of these organizations provides a pantry service for the people they serve to assist in helping them meet their monthly food expenses. The food donated by Fordham Prep helps to stock these pantries. This year our goal as a community is to collect 23,000 non perishable food items. Beginning on November 4th and continuing through November 24th donations can be brought to the Hall of Honor each morning from 8 am to 8:35 am. If the goal of 23,000 is reached, the school will closed the day after the superbowl. But most importantly we will help ensure that families in our community will not go without food during this winter season!
Items Most Needed List
An anonymous donor will match $2 for every food item up to $60,000 to provide tuition assistance to students from the same neighborhood as the food pantries.
The following resources are available to help you learn more about the issue of hunger:
What the Church Teaches:
Catholic Social Teaching and Food: http://crs.org/emergency/downloads/cst-food.pdf
Catholic Reflections on Food, Farmers, and Farmworkers was developed by the Committee on Domestic Policy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:
http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/agriculture-nutrition-rural-issues/for-i-was-hungry.cfm
Hunger in US:
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/32800.php
http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-hunger-us
Hunger around the world:
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
http://www.bread.org/hunger/global/
http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/10/16/one-billion-people-around-the-world-go-hungry/7843/
Facts about Hunger in our world:
- Almost 800 million people – about 1/6 of the population of the world’s developing nations – are malnourished. 200 million of them are children. (Food and Agriculture Organization)
- In developing nations one in every five people is hungry (841 million people).
- In developing nations one in four persons lacks access to safe drinking water.
- 790 million people are chronically undernourished in the developing world. Another 34 million people in the industrialized world, mostly in the former Soviet Union, are said to suffer a similar fate. (Food and Agriculture Organization)
- 828 million people in developing countries around the world lack enough food to sustain normal activity.
- One third of the population of the developing world, or nearly 1.3 billion people, lives on less than $1 per day. One World Bank report estimates that 1.9 billion people may be under the dollar-a-day line by 2015.
- Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that there are 185.9 million hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa. That is 34% of the population.
- In Sub-Saharan Africa only 4% of the land is irrigated.
- The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 28 million people in Africa face food shortages, and many will need food aid this year to avoid starvation.
- In the industrialized world 100 million people live below the poverty line, more than 5 million are homeless, and 40 million are jobless
